E-Lit Review of "Fitting the Pattern" by Christine Wilks

Christine Wilks describes her piece, "Fitting the Pattern," as ,"cutting through memories, pinning down facts, stitching fabrications, unpicking the past - an interactive, animated memoir, created in Flash, exploring aspects of my relationship with my dressmaking mother. Life's mysteries are rarely uncovered by a logical, linear process of deduction. You arrive at answers, ideas, suspicions, intuitions, haphazardly in fragments. Over time you build the picture, piece by piece, shuffling and rearranging, until you start to see a pattern emerging. The structure of Fitting the Pattern attempts to replicate this experience; hence it is a memoir in pieces that the reader can explore, to some extent, in a non-linear fashion. There are certain parallels between my mother's creative craft process and my own in new media; therefore the visual design of the piece is based on the aesthetics of sewing patterns. These similarities, as well as our differences, are embedded in the digital media and text, literally drawn out through animation and dramatized through interactivity. Custom cursors designed as digital dressmaking tools fuse the interactive process into the narrative world, so the reader becomes actively involved in constructing and/or unpicking the narrative." 

This description alone summarizes the piece so incredibly well, that in some way, I feel like I can't say anything more about it. But I have to admit that I was drawn to this piece solely due to the description -- the idea that you build a pattern piece by piece and that not all of these pieces are found in a linear fashion. You have to search for them and sew them together correctly to discover the whole picture.  That being said, in this piece, you are doing just that. 

"Fitting the Pattern" is a piece of interactive fiction, specifically an interactive memoir. You, as the reader, are navigating through the piece, you are doing the weaving together of the whole picture. You are discovering the relationship between daughter and mother. You are discovering the values the mother holds dear and imparts on her child. The experience is all yours. And in a way, that makes the piece by far more relate-able to each and every one of us. 

Now it's time to explore "Fitting the Pattern." You can access this piece via the Electronic Literature Collection #2 or via this link. The first page is by far the most important. Read the instructions carefully. It already indicates a difference between dressmaker and the dressmaker's daughter. In further scenes, you'll see that the pattern is the dressmaker's ideal mold for her daughter and that the daughter feels she should fit the clothes, not have the clothes fit her. 

Now, grab the scissors. I urge you to play around with it. Follow the little arrow. Move your mouse toward the direction of the arrow and you're good to go. Once you've "cut" the pattern, text  appears. This text indicates how the daughter let her mother, the dressmaker down. Once you finish reading, you continue cutting along the appropriate lines, revealing more and more pieces of the memoir. 

I loved that this piece was interactive and that I could move at my own pace. I began to become anxious about what would appear next. What piece of the puzzle I was missing. The navigation wasn't very easy, but it wasn't hard either. If you don't move your cursor after a few long seconds, a pointer will appear or the objects will begin to wobble, pointing you to the direction you must go for the next piece of the memoir. 

The textual elements included layering effects, visual images, sound and overall interactivity of the piece regarding navigation.  Out of these four elements, the most important was definitely the interactivity. Like I said earlier, the fact that you are piecing together the pattern and discovering the story on your own is imperative. One reviewer noted that, "When my friend talks to me about her mother and the struggles that they have had, she obviously doesn’t sit me down and list her grievances in order starting at her birth. With any person, you learn about them in bits and pieces out of order and I think this text captures that very well." I totally agree with this statement. Because you can go through the text in your own way, you learn about the narrator just like you would learn about any other person in real life. 

The interactivity is also used in regards to navigation. The fact that you are so-called "doing the work," you are navigating through the piece how you want to and at your own pace. Additionally, the element of the layering and removal of layers is a major part in the piece as well because it symbolizes an actual clothes fitting. You cut and sew layers of fabric to create a garment that should fit you properly. In a way, the removal of layers in the piece is the removal of said garment, which in this case, seems to be the removal of the mold the narrator's mother has for her.

Next is the images. The tools used and the visual imagery of the layers peeling away and being tended to give life to the piece. It sucks you into the narrator's story by rehashing her childhood in a visual manner. 

Finally, sound plays a very small role in "Fitting the Pattern." Noise will accompany the tools you use. It's a gentle reminder that you really are piecing together the pattern and getting the whole picture.

That being said, in my opinion, the overall feeling I got from the memoir was sadness. And to be honest it didn't seem like the textual elements had any impact on me. Yes, it was nice to play around with the tools and to reveal new layers at my own pace. Plus, it was a nice way to showcase symbolism at its best, but I don't feel these elements contributed to the feel of the piece. Instead, it created a nice creative foundation for the work. The words were really what struck home for me. 

I didn't find any critiques for "Fitting the Pattern." Although I found a couple of reviews, like the one I referenced above.  There are a few more reviews floating on the Internet, but nothing too in depth.

You can access the reviews here and here.